beat more quickly. Whatever Mary Perkins had done to delay getting off the plane must have been good. If she could only hold out a little longer, Jane would be able to tie the knot in time.
The two men were staring at each other now, silently conferring. The departure of the flight attendants struck them as evidence that they had already watched all the passengers get off the plane at Gate 10. The two women they had been told to watch for had not been among them. But there was a person waiting at Gate 12 holding a sign that said mary perkins. A second flight from Los Angeles was going to arrive at that gate any minute. Obviously they had been given the wrong airline and flight number. The men silently agreed. First one man went to the drinking fountain. When he came back up the concourse, it was to Gate 12, where Jane waited. She pretended not to see him. She looked at her watch, at the clock on the wall, at the carpet.
At last the second man moved. He walked along the window, pretended to see something out on the runway, and moved closer to get a better angle. Then, without seeming to have made a decision, he was in Jane's waiting area. He guessed maybe he hadn't seen anything after all. He looked at his watch and sat down.
Now there was only one more thing. If they were trained, or even if they had an instinct for this sort of work, they would be anxious not to spook her. A woman limousine driver who picked up strangers at airports probably often drove alone at night, and she would be careful to avoid being stalked. The sensible place for them to be was behind her, and fairly far away.
Jane turned to face Gate 12, so the men would move to the spots where she wanted them to be. She let her eyes go up under the brim of her cap and used the reflection in the darkened window to check. Yes, they were perfect now, watching her from behind, not able to see the first gate at all.
She picked up movement behind them. Mary Perkins was not a novice. She was coming out of the accordion tunnel fast. Ten steps across the waiting area, around the corner, and gone.
Jane needed to keep their attention on her, so she stood up and walked toward the gate. She sat down in the closest seat she could find to the gate and held her sign in her lap. She felt her heart begin to beat more slowly. Now time had a little knot in it. and the longer the rest of it took the better. The men were convinced that Mary Perkins's plane was about to arrive, but she was already on her way down to the car-rental counter.
A woman much like the one who had presided over the arrival of Jane's flight announced, 'Flight 907 from Los Angeles will be arriving at Gate 12 in approximately four minutes.' Jane could already see the lights of the plane shimmying along at the end of the runway. She kept her head motionless so the two men wouldn't get the urge to move again. She could see that the plane was a big one, and this improved her chances considerably.
The plane slowly rolled to the terminal and nuzzled up to the doorway. The ground crew chocked the wheels, the boarding tunnel extended a few feet to touch the fuselage, and the engines shut down. People near Jane began to stand up and congregate near the doorway. Most of the passengers flying into McCarran were strangers, so the crowd of relatives and friends was small.
Jane stood among them. She held up the mary perkins sign while she watched the first few passengers come out. There were some middle-aged couples, some men traveling alone, a couple of grandmothers. Then there were about ten people of both sexes who seemed to be the age of college students, and she remembered there was a college here. Then she saw a pair of women in their early thirties, and one of them was blond.
She had been cradling the mary perkins sign under her chin, and now she flipped the sign over without letting the move be visible from behind. She stepped out where the two women could not help seeing her, and tried to look at them winningly. They read her new sign:
PRIVATE LIMO: ANY HOTEL, THREE DOLLARS.
The blond woman stopped and asked, 'Three dollars for both of us, or three each?'
Jane smiled. 'If you're both going to the same place, I'll take you for four.'
The blonde said, 'Caesar's.'
'No sweat,' said Jane.
The three women walked down the concourse quickly.
Jane didn't look behind her to see if the men were following. She knew they were. She said, 'You've been to Vegas before?'
The blonde had appointed herself to do the talking. 'Once in a while. Just when we get really sick of behaving ourselves. We gamble, stay up late, and never grade a single paper.'
'You're teachers?'
'Yes,' said the other one, who had curly brown hair. 'As if you couldn't tell by looking.'
Jane felt guilty about what she was going to do next, but the truth was that both of them were attractive in a scrubbed-and-deodorized way. 'No,' she said. 'Everybody comes to Vegas. I just drive them around. Once you're here, you're whoever you say you are - at least until your money's gone. I wouldn't have guessed teachers, though. Most people wouldn't.'
'Sure,' said the blonde.
'Really. Those two guys who gave you the wall-to-wall and roof-to-foundation when you got off the plane. I bet they don't think you're teachers.'
The quiet one said, 'That's a laugh.' As though to prove it, she laughed.
Jane had put the itch in them, and that was enough. At some point in their walk to the baggage area, each of them would turn and look at the two men, trying very hard and very clumsily to be sure she wasn't caught at it. Looking had nothing to do with real interest. It didn't matter if they were nuns, or lesbians in the tenth year of a lifelong relationship. If they were human, they would look. The idea that they were being watched might frighten them or disgust them or make their weekend, but they would look, and when they did, the two men would be sure.
Jane led them to the baggage claim and waited while they tried to spot their suitcases. The dark one said, 'Are those the ones? Don't look.'
Jane didn't look. She said, 'Tall, muscular guy with dark hair and cowboy boots. Shorter one with curly hair. Both in coats, no ties.'
'Yes,' said the blonde. 'The very ones.'
Her companion turned to her in surprise. 'You looked?'
'Of course I did,' said the blonde. 'As soon as I heard about it. But I have a feeling they're not our type. Worse luck.'
There was more to the quiet one than Jane had expected. 'Maybe my type in Las Vegas isn't the same as my type in Woodland Hills.' She was joking, but some part of her mind was agitated.
Jane decided not to let them get too curious. 'A lot of ugly things happen in this town. Nobody you want to know hangs around in airports looking for a nice date.'
The two bags came down and the blonde soberly scooped them both off the track. Jane picked them up and walked toward the exit with the two women at her back. She used the seconds to prepare herself. If Mary Perkins had failed to rent the car in time, or more likely, had rented it and decided not to drive it back into the light and danger of the airport, Jane was going to be left at the curb with two innocents and some men who might consider this a good opportunity to push them into the back of a car.
She stepped out the door into the cool desert air, set the bags down on the sidewalk, and looked around her. She was careful not to look behind her for the two men, but she knew they must be coming closer. Then a car swung out from the loading zone for United Airlines a hundred yards away and glided toward them. It was a black Lincoln Town Car, and as it drew nearer, she could see Mary Perkins behind the wheel, her face set in an expression of intense discomfort. She stopped two feet from the curb in front of Jane.
The order and economy of Jane's movements were critical now. As soon as the car stopped she swung open the back door and said, 'Hop in.' As soon as the two women were inside she pushed the button down and slammed the door. Scooping somebody off a curb was easy, but dragging them out of a locked car took time and force. She snatched the suitcases off the pavement, scurried to the back of the car, and banged on the trunk. Mary Perkins leaned out the window and tossed her the key. She set the suitcases inside, closed the lid, and looked around her as she ran to the driver's side. She couldn't see them anywhere, which meant they were somewhere nearby getting into their own car. 'I'll drive,' she said.
Mary Perkins barely had time to slide to the passenger seat before Jane was inside and wheeling the big car out into the loop. She drove fast to be sure the two men thought it was worthwhile to keep her in sight. She swung to the right on Las Vegas Boulevard. The Strip began just past the airport entrance, and already she was gliding past big hotels: Excalibur, Tropicana, Aladdin, Bally's on the right, the Dunes on the left. They stopped for the light
